Ms. Greene’s critics have said that she frequently referred to efforts to challenge the 2020 presidential election results as “our 1776 moment” in public comments that led up to the riot at the Capitol. They contend that the phrase was a code used to incite violence, and point to the third section of the 14th Amendment in their argument to drop her from the ballot.
That section says that “no person shall” be a member of Congress or hold civil office if they had engaged in insurrection or rebellion after “having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State.”
The constitutional challenge to Ms. Greene’s candidacy, filed last month with Georgia’s secretary of state, argued that Ms. Greene had helped to plan the attack on the Capitol or knew that a demonstration organized by Mr. Trump and his supporters on the National Mall would escalate into violence.
The group pursuing the case is represented by Free Speech for People, a nonpartisan, nonprofit legal advocacy organization with constitutional law expertise, which was also involved in the case involving Mr. Cawthorn.
Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key Developments
Card 1 of 3Debating a criminal referral. The Jan. 6 House committee has grown divided over whether to make a criminal referral of former President Donald J. Trump to the Justice Department, even though it has concluded that it has enough evidence to do so. The debate centers on whether a referral would backfire by politically tainting the expanding federal investigation.
Continuing election doubts. More than a year after they tried and failed to use Congress’s final count of electoral votes on Jan. 6 to overturn the election, some Trump allies are pushing bogus legal theories about “decertifying” the 2020 vote and continuing to fuel a false narrative that has resonated with Mr. Trump’s supporters.
Cooperating with investigators. Pat A. Cipollone and Patrick F. Philbi, two of Mr. Trump’s top White House lawyers, met with the Jan. 6 House committee, while Ali Alexander, a prominent organizer of pro-Trump events after the 2020 election, said he would assist in the federal investigation.
Ron Fein, the legal director for Free Speech for People, heralded the ruling on Monday night in an email to The New York Times.
“Judge Totenberg’s well-reasoned opinion explains why the Georgia voters who filed this challenge against Greene have the right to have their challenge heard, and why none of Greene’s objections to the Georgia state challenge have any merit,” Mr. Fein said. “At the hearing on Friday, we look forward to questioning Greene under oath about her involvement in the events of Jan. 6, and to demonstrating how her facilitation of the insurrection disqualifies her from public office under the United States Constitution.”
Last year, the House removed Ms. Greene from the Education and Budget Committees for endorsing the executions of Democrats and spreading dangerous and bigoted misinformation. The move — supported by the majority of Democrats and opposed nearly unanimously by Republicans — diminished Ms. Greene’s influence in the chamber.